U.N. Says Lag in Confronting Climate Woes Will Be Costly

Justin Gillis, reporting for the New York Times:

Another 15 years of failure to limit carbon emissions could make the problem virtually impossible to solve with current technologies, experts found.

A delay would most likely force future generations to develop the ability to suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and store them underground to preserve the livability of the planet, the report found. But it is not clear whether such technologies will ever exist at the necessary scale, and even if they do, the approach would probably be wildly expensive compared with taking steps now to slow emissions.

I can see this report having an unintended consequence—that people who don’t think we should do anything about carbon emissions today will point to this, saying that it’s already too late, that we don’t have the technology now, so it’s up to future generations to develop that capacity.

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